753 research outputs found
Revisiting the Core Ontology and Problem in Requirements Engineering
In their seminal paper in the ACM Transactions on Software Engineering and
Methodology, Zave and Jackson established a core ontology for Requirements
Engineering (RE) and used it to formulate the "requirements problem", thereby
defining what it means to successfully complete RE. Given that stakeholders of
the system-to-be communicate the information needed to perform RE, we show that
Zave and Jackson's ontology is incomplete. It does not cover all types of basic
concerns that the stakeholders communicate. These include beliefs, desires,
intentions, and attitudes. In response, we propose a core ontology that covers
these concerns and is grounded in sound conceptual foundations resting on a
foundational ontology. The new core ontology for RE leads to a new formulation
of the requirements problem that extends Zave and Jackson's formulation. We
thereby establish new standards for what minimum information should be
represented in RE languages and new criteria for determining whether RE has
been successfully completed.Comment: Appears in the proceedings of the 16th IEEE International
Requirements Engineering Conference, 2008 (RE'08). Best paper awar
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